CHAPTER 10

ANSCHLUSS 1938

Nearly a year has passed since my first Passover dinner with the Kosiner family. It will soon be time for another Easter and Passover season but this spring holds more dread than promise and we are not making plans for a seder. My family and Poldi’s have come together often for meals and discussions and Mama has told me how much she likes them, but there is more to think about these days than pleasant conversation and holidays.

The political situation has worsened, and everyone in Vienna is talking about the unrest and threat of war. The Rome-Berlin Axis has been announced and newspapers show photos of Hitler and Mussolini smiling broadly, strolling at ease, surrounded by their bodyguards and soldiers. This means that Italy has withdrawn its support of Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg in his stand against Germany, and now Austria remains vulnerable and alone. More than all the political propaganda and rhetoric, treaties, and negotiations, it is Hitler’s obsession with the Jews that haunts us. The daily routine of life has become distorted by the political turmoil churning almost palpably in the air.

On March 11, 1938, Germany announces the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria. We sit spellbound by our radio as Schuschnigg’s tremulous voice announces our capitulation. “God save Austria,” he says with the desperation of defeat. When we hear his words we know that all is lost. Schuschnigg is immediately overthrown and Hitler’s forces march triumphantly into Vienna. There are enormous banners bearing the Fuhrer’s face everywhere we go. The majority of Austrian citizens greet the news with jubilation and take their patriotic ardour into the streets, wasting no time in slandering their Jewish neighbours and engaging in wild rioting, vicious name-calling, and the brutal destruction of property. With horrible consequences to the Jewish population, the anti-Semitic fervour in Austria has been magnified even beyond the hatred that has spread its menacing terror in Germany. Every pretence of tolerance and egalitarian respect is disappearing without explanation.

When exactly did the nightmare begin? When did this insanity first seep into our settled and secure world? When did my lifetime friends become enemies and the good-natured red-faced butcher and cheerful delivery boy change into SS monsters?

Like a tower of playing cards that is falling apart, our world is collapsing. Day after day we experience more devastating losses of freedom, and our lives are at increased risk. In the first week after the Anschluss, Jews are dismissed from their posts in theatres, community centres, and public libraries. On March 15 it is announced that all Jewish state officials have been fired from their positions, and two days later Jewish judges are removed. On the twenty-second, lawyers in all Austrian courts are required to wear swastikas. Any cases involving Jewish defendants are no longer brought to trial and all are immediately convicted simply because they are Jews. On March 26, Jews are fired from universities and colleges, then schools, markets, and slaughterhouses. Kosher ritual slaughter of meat is forbidden. On March 31, Jewish lawyers are prohibited from practising their profession. The swift, sudden, and irrevocable impact of these laws comes as a devastating blow. Freedom is being withdrawn on every front. The weak and elderly are forced to scrub the pavements with toothbrushes, bent down, made to erase Schuschnigg slogans. Jews are dragged through the streets, made to perform inane gymnastic tricks; heads are shaved; and wherever we go, we are jeered and scoffed at by the gathering crowds. We shake our heads in disbelief. How has this happened?

March folds into April and all the Viennese springtimes I have loved have become a distant watercolour, the pastel patches of sunlight and shadow replaced now by dark shades, heavy strokes of hatred and bloodshed. We move like sleepwalkers going about our daily chores, keeping the store open despite the smears on our windows and the threats from passers-by. I cherish the letters I receive periodically from Poldi and reread the tattered ones that I take often from their little box. When I write to him, I have nothing but distress to share. Comfort is not easy to find. We are only Jews now, nothing more; our identities as Austrians have evaporated.

Daily disturbances surround us – a neighbour attacked, a friend’s husband taken away for interrogation and never returned to his home, properties looted without police intervention or means of retribution. The dangers move closer and closer like a menacing fog.

Each new day seems to bring some more bizarre catastrophe. On the morning of April 23 we are awakened once more by the sounds that are beginning to become routine, the sound of screaming citizens being forced down the street in some new horrific plan of degradation and destruction. We peer cautiously out our window and watch the agony below. People are being dragged along by soldiers, rounded up this Saturday, the holy day for Jews, and taken to the Prater Amusement Park. We dare not follow the mob so we wait inside to learn of the fate that befell them.

Fritz has come to see us, to bring us a bit of food. It is too dangerous to leave our flat for any purpose and we are struggling to make do with our last supplies.

“What happened this morning, Fritz?” I ask, taking the bread and cheese from him. “There was some commotion in the streets again and we saw the Nazis storming about.”

“I was passing by the Prater earlier today and noticed a crowd gathered,” he answers, his head down, a look of disgust on his face. “There were Jewish people, rounded up and forced to cower on hands and knees like dogs or cattle.” He pauses.

“And then what happened?”

“Then? Well, then they were made to eat the grass. Those helpless souls, old men, young girls, women, all of them, forced to chew and swallow it, only to be beaten if they refused. A crowd was cheering the Nazis, slandering the victims. There was no pity even as they began to vomit up the foul green stuff that had been forced down their throats. There were a few who collapsed of heart attacks and even several who, I was told, later died from the ordeal.”

Chaos surrounds us. In the streets motor vehicles are tooting horns, making a mad attempt at escape. Those with means and some foresight have arranged for a way out. The traffic is a hectic tangle as people try to leave the city. We know of some who have received exit visas and are able to flee; even a few of our relatives are leaving, abandoning all possessions as they race out of Austria to other destinations – to South America or anywhere that will offer sanctuary. But we are stranded. We and our widowed mother have no plan in place, no connections abroad to welcome us.

Our only option is to keep on with our lives, trying to survive day to day, continuing to earn whatever bit of money we can just to provide food. Each night we lie in bed thanking God that we have lived through another twenty-four hours. Even though we are one step ahead of starvation, I try to put some food aside for Poldi’s parents, and he and his brother manage to send them a little money from Milan.

April rain has soaked the streets and the sun is beginning to slip out of the clouds. I am dusting shelves in the store when Erna bursts in, her long dark hair matted with sweat. Her arm is bruised and her sleeve is torn. The usual blush on her cheeks has vanished and her eyes are wild with fear. She storms through the door and rushes towards me and Mama behind the counter, where we stand in petrified disbelief. She is shivering, and when she touches my hand I feel that she is as cold as ice.

“My God, Erna, what has happened to you?” Mama asks, as she hurries towards her eldest child.

In a trembling voice, Erna tells us what happened as she was on her way to work. “Oh Mama, the Nazi soldiers forced me to scrub the sidewalks, and one of them struck me when I couldn’t understand what they wanted of me. I couldn’t believe that they expected me to get down on the street, down at their boots, down on the ground, down, down, down, where dogs howled in my face.” Tears smear her pale cheeks; in her distraught state, she wipes the palms of her hands on her skirt, over and over, oblivious to what she’s doing. Her crazed appearance terrifies us.

We enfold her in our arms and try to comfort her but she can’t stop shaking as she relives the agony.

In the streets of Vienna these displays of humiliation and treachery continue. Many families have begun to depart for unknown lands. Everywhere we go people talk about leaving, trying to decide whether it might still be possible to stay and hope for peace.

When we make our usual visit to the cemetery to visit the graves of Papa and Grandmother, who has died in the past year, we are horrified to find the whole area has been vandalized and much of it destroyed. Flower beds have been trampled, headstones overturned. The loathed markings of the swastika emblem are smeared over everything.

I pick up the dislodged headstones for Papa and for Grandmother and try to set the flowers upright again but it is not safe to linger long in the Jewish cemetery. We are apprehensive of the Nazis, who seem to be squirming up from the very ground everywhere like maggots, increasing in number daily, spreading their contaminating hatred. We touch the markers gently and with heavy-hearted sadness leave our small stones behind.

Nazi troops are stomping through the streets of Vienna. These are the “Brownshirts,” in their flapping trench-coats, with blood-red armbands bearing the brazen swastika emblems that strike deadly fear into our limbs. Day by day, fragments of our lives are wrenched away. Suddenly we are not welcome in the homes of our closest non-Jewish friends. Stunned, I look at myself in the mirror: I have not changed. I look at them: they have not changed. Yet everything is different, and I have suddenly been abandoned by those I counted as friends.

Whispers in the beginning, then loud name-calling follow us home in the streets. The authorities condone and encourage the persecution. Jewish children are not allowed to attend classes, and Jewish teachers are dismissed. We are forbidden to go to the theatres, to restaurants, and to the shops. Workers in offices and factories are fired. In the newspapers there are evil caricatures of the ugly Jew, ridiculed and despised, reduced to the level of rodents or insects.

By Nazi decree all Jewish citizens are made to present themselves at the nearest government office where they must provide complete details regarding all possessions. Mama, sombre-faced like the rest, stands in line with hundreds of others for hours in the damp cold. Under supervision of the armed SS soldiers, she dutifully signs her name and date of birth to the papers outlining everything that may be of interest to the occupying troops and Nazi government. All bank accounts, domestic and foreign, all property holdings and furnishings, jewellery, artwork, gold, all are to be carefully entered into the record books.

When she returns home, weary lines of defeat are etched into her face. She doesn’t want to talk to us. No words can express the sorrow and helplessness that encumbers her like a constant leaden weight. The strength of her spirit and resolve have been trodden to dust by the Nazis’ heavy boots.

One late April morning, Mama is sipping her coffee and reading the newspaper. Across the table, I watch as she sets the cup down with a trembling hand. In the newspaper there is a piece from the Nazi propaganda paper, the Volkischer Beobachter (People’s Spectator). She reads it aloud, her voice quivering with emotion, pausing now and then to catch her breath so she can continue.

“By the year 1942 the Jewish element in Vienna will have to have been wiped out and made to disappear. No shop, no business will be permitted by that time to be under Jewish management, no Jew may find anywhere any opportunity to earn a living and with the exception of those streets where the old Jews and Jewesses are using up their money, the export of which is prohibited, while they wait for death, nothing of it may show itself in the city. No one who knows Viennese opinion regarding the Jewish question will be surprised that the four years in which the economic death sentence on the Jews is to be executed seems much too long a time to them. They are puzzled by all the fuss, by the pedantic attention to the maintenance and protection of Jewish property; after all it is very simple: ‘The Jew must go – and his cash must remain.’”

Mama rises abruptly from her seat, leaving us sitting, open-mouthed, at the table. Her fear and the words she has read send ripples of dread through us.

“I am going to the bank – now!” she declares, pulling on her coat and hat. By the time we move from the table, she is already outside. We run to the window to see her dash around the corner, her coat flapping in the wind, and soon out of sight.

Willi and I wait in worried anticipation for what seems hours. When we hear her opening the front door, we rush to greet her. She had left in such a state and hurry that we knew something dreadful was about to happen, and because she was racing for the bank, we feared our money was somehow in jeopardy. She staggers unsteadily into the room and slumps into the nearest chair, without removing her coat. She holds her head in her hands and begins to cry, her body heaving and shaking, unable to speak. We run to bring her a drink of water. Terrified, we plead with her to stop and to tell us what has happened but she can hardly breathe.

When exhaustion overcomes her at last, she is silent. Looking up at our horrified faces she reveals, her voice weak, cracking from the rivers of tears she has shed, that all Jewish bank accounts have been frozen, confiscated by the Nazis. We have nothing.

If the earth had opened before me and swallowed all of Vienna into itself, I could better have understood what was happening. How could everything Papa had worked for so diligently be taken from us so easily?

“But Mama, what has happened to all the money that Papa had and all the money from the business?” I ask perplexed.

“Oh, Nini, what can I say? There is no one to ask and no one to fight,” Mama answers in weary resignation.

“But the money?” Willi repeats, as confused as I.

“All the money we had is now in the hands of the Germans – their laws govern us. They have stolen it just like common thieves and will not give it back. We are Jews and we have no rights, not to claim our own possessions, not to work, not to live in peace.”

She stares blankly into space, unable to cry any more. We look at one another, our faces ashen. For the first time we realize that Mama is emotionally destroyed and cannot save us and that we will have to find a way out ourselves.

Of course, we are not alone. Nearly every day for weeks, Mama has received word of relatives who have been stripped of all their belongings and taken away. We no longer have contact with any of the aunties, but we know the Nazis have confiscated their businesses and homes. Jewish neighbours and friends, people we have known all our lives, are disappearing, taken by soldiers from their homes to be interrogated, then never to be seen again. Gentile neighbours shun us as though we were diseased. Shop windows are smeared with yellow stars and the word “Juden”, or they are smashed and looted. Businesses are confiscated, means of survival are removed, and the government and police have become the enemy. Law and order is replaced by corruption and indiscriminate bloodshed. Convicted murderers are being released en masse from the prisons, given Nazi uniforms and the most brutal and cruel are given senior status. Terror runs amok.

At night, I lie awake, trying to think of an answer to the dilemma. Mama and Papa taught us never to give up but they could not have foreseen this apocalyptic crisis. We seem to be trapped and our time is growing short. It is clear that things will not suddenly return to normal. I struggle with my thoughts until dawn’s light begins to flood into my room and still I have found no plan for rescue. But I am determined to try, to speak to everyone we know who might help, to beg Poldi in my letters to work on our behalf. I clench my fists and shake away the tears in my eyes. I am not ready to give in.

My brother, Willi, is sixteen when he is arrested on the street by Nazi soldiers in broad daylight. One of his friends has come running into our apartment with the news that Willi, like so many other young Jewish men, has been taken away by the SS.

“We were just going to meet for a coffee and then, in front of us we saw them approach and before we knew it he was taken, one of them grabbing him by each arm,” he tells us.

“Where?” I ask in frantic disbelief. “Where is he?”

“They took him in a car and I think they went to Nazi headquarters but I don’t know. We couldn’t follow him, you understand. It would have done no good, they would only have taken us too.”

I spend no time talking to him. There is no use accusing him of cowardice. In the end he is probably right, but Willi is my only brother. I will not let him down even though my own life is at risk.

If I don’t rescue him, he will be sent away to be imprisoned somewhere or killed. In outrage and horror, I rush up the steps into Nazi headquarters to find him. The headquarters are in the old Metropole Hotel, which was previously owned by a Jew but was confiscated from him “for the good of the Reich.” Now the Nazi flag flies from his building.

“Karpel.” I give our name to a Gestapo officer seated at a desk. “My brother, Willi, has been brought here.”

“Yes, you are his sister – we will want to question you too.” My arms are numb, my mouth goes dry, and my palms are damp and cold as I follow him. I wonder if my knees will buckle beneath me. I remember that Mama will soon be home from the store and will be worried. I didn’t leave a note for her but then, what could I have said?

He leads me to another room and opens the heavy door. Inside, the lighting is dim but I can see Willi seated on the edge of a wooden chair, the harsh overhead light reflecting off his glasses. Perspiration has moistened his forehead but when I reach for his hand, it is as cold as mine.

For hours, we are interrogated by members of the SS, hard men with scars etched into their faces, who stare at us with empty eyes, unable to see the human beings before them. In barking commands and unanswerable questions, they accuse us of undermining the government of Austria, of political subterfuge, of the crime of our own birth and mere existence, of Jewish conspiracy, and of any other madness that strikes them. We cannot answer these senseless accusations and remain silent throughout the questioning. The men exchange some words, then one of them takes us down the hall to another room and orders us to remain there. The door shuts with the heaviness of anger.

Finally, we are left alone, standing in the small dark room with no windows, no chairs. The air is stagnant and dank. We whisper to one another, terror in every word. We may not see the light again or may live only to be shipped away to somewhere unknown, never to return home.

The door opens. We shield our eyes and try to adjust to the white light. We see three uniformed Gestapo officers positioning themselves around the room.

“You,” he blurts, looking at me, his fist smashing the little table before him, “you have been plotting against the Reich, forging visas for Jews to escape their just punishment. You are a traitor and traitors must die!”

“No, that’s not true.”

“You have been seen with others who are traitors, meeting, scheming, working like rats in the night, the way Jews do, to gnaw their way into the German stronghold. We will destroy you all before your plans can succeed.”

“Where is your father?” another demands.

“He is dead,” I answer quietly.

“When did he die? How did he die? We believe that he may be in hiding, committing crimes against the state.”

We shudder in horror at this accusation.

“No, sir, we remember that the doctors said he was dead.”

“Yeah, Jewish doctors who signed the death certificate. We know that you people all lie and conspire together only for the money.”

“We were very young but we know. We haven’t seen him since 1922. That has been fifteen years already. We went to the funeral and saw the wooden casket lowered into the ground. We visit his grave.”

“Who holds deed to your property then? Is it this young man?”

“No, our mother holds the deed. She will tell you herself that our father worked very hard for the sake of the business. Everyone knows that.”

“Quiet! Jews only steal from others. We are here to take back the possessions that rightfully belong to the Austrian people.”

“We are Austrian too,” Willi says, trembling, barely audible.

“Jews are not anything. They have no right to walk on the same earth or inhale the same air as true Austrians. Tell your mother that the SS will be at her door in the morning. She will sign all the documents without resistance or there will be a more severe penalty than you may imagine.”

They turn and storm out of the room, slamming the door behind them as they leave us shivering in the dark again. Another hour passes before we are finally allowed to leave, without explanation. Hand in hand, white as chalk and shaking, we emerge from Gestapo headquarters. I breathe deeply to fill my lungs with clean air and to expel the hot nausea that has overcome me. Our nerves are taut as wire, at the very limit of endurance. My legs will not support me, and I collapse on the bottom step in a heap of quivering exhaustion. Willi is terrified and shaking. His glasses teeter on the tip of his nose as, pulling on my hand, he begs me to stand up. “We have to go, Nini. They could change their minds any moment and call us back inside. If we are taken again, we will not get out. Please, get up. We can make it home. I’ll help you. Come on.”

Leaning on one another for support, we make our way through the streets, where every shadow presents a new menace, every passing soldier stomping by, a source of renewed terror. Eventually we are able to stumble back home but the pervasive poison enters with us.

Mama is in the parlour, having coffee with her friend and neighbour, Frau Kaufmann, who is also a widow but with no children. Their chatter stops suddenly when they see Willi and me, arm in arm, staggering into the room. We sink into the closest chairs as if we had no bones and were just floppy cloth dolls.

The two women rush to us in alarm, peppering us with questions about where we have been and what has happened to us. Still in shock, we are too dazed even to respond. After we manage to swallow some hot coffee we tell them fragments of the story. Mama puts her hands to her face in dismay, then suggests that Frau Kaufmann should leave saying that we are obviously tired after our ordeal in Nazi headquarters. Standing in the doorway, Frau Kaufmann looks back to us and shakes her head dismally. “How can we endure this life? What merciful God could allow this treachery to exist? Maybe it would be better to die now than continue to suffer like this.” She closes the door sadly behind her.

We tell Mama that the Nazis questioned us about Papa and demanded to know who was in control of the family business. That was why they had taken Willi for interrogation. We explain that the Gestapo will come to our home in the morning to see her. If she signs away all deeds and rights of our properties to the Reich without resistance, they may allow us to stay in Vienna until we can arrange to emigrate. We know we have no options in the matter and that we will be lucky just to preserve our lives.